Yeah, as others have pointed out, that's not the case at all. It would be very surprising to hear, given the horrifying list of chemical additives I read on the ingredients of imported American food products.
(I've corrected the comment) I know, which is exactly why this thing stood out to me. I don't know which substance or process I'm misremembering but I'm pretty sure there was something/some context where the US had stricter laws than the EU.
I think it's Sodium Cyclamte, a sweetener in the Non-US Sweet n Low variants (I'm guessing because I had researched sweeteners pretty thoroughly at one point too).
Stevia was banned in the States (as in the EU) for a long time after it was allowed for consumption in other domains across the globe. I know I looked into importing some from Japan many (many) moons ago (purely out of idle interest) before getting bored and not bothering. Glad I didn't, because it's just as piss-poor as all the other artificial sweeteners..!
Stevia was never banned in the US, but it is still not "generally recognized as safe" by the FDA, so it cannot be sold as food. It does get sold as a "dietary supplement", though. Rebaudioside A, which is a Stevia extract and the basis for the "Stevia" sweeteners on the market, is recognized by the FDA.
